Supreme Court to Hear Chicago Gun Ban Case

Good news everybody the Supreme Court is going to hear the Chicago case on the banning of firearms. According to the article we won’t have a verdict until summer rolls around but if the Supreme Court is smart, and they follow the Heller decision, states and local cities won’t be able to ban firearms anymore.

It’s amazing to me when I realize we have one of the most anti-gun administrations in power yet the gun rights movements been going stronger than ever. Coincidence? Maybe we just needed a fire lit under our collective butts, because we’re moving full ahead now.

Riddle Me This, How Does a Broke Nation Pay for Longer School Days

OK it’s no secret that our public education system sucks. As much as I don’t like our current president (due to polices not race, regardless of what his critics say) but I will say his idea for pushing up education makes more sense than Bush’s cronies No Child Left Behind Act.

Obama is making a push to extend the school year. Now I’m well out of school so this really doesn’t affect me. For those of you currently in school all I have to say is suckers!

I’m not sure if extended the school year will improve our education system much. In fact I’m guessing it won’t. I’m not saying this because I want Obama to fail on this, far from it. I’d love to have the base education level in this country go up. The problem though is money. See schools don’t have enough of it already and keeping them open for longer is going to cost more of it.

We also need more high quality teachers. Of course being teachers don’t make shit for money, because there isn’t any, there is no incentive for many people to enter the teaching career. This is where somebody usually says something about teachers going into their career because they want to teach children. That’s true for those currently in it but there are many out there who want to teach children and be a food provider for their family. These people often decide to go elsewhere since proving for their family is more important than helping other peoples’ children.

I’m certainly not advocating the federal government give more money it doesn’t have to education. I am advocating finding means to help schools raise their own money. Having money would open the doors to better learning materials and faculty. Look at all the best schools in the nation they are private. Why? Because private schools make money and hence can afford to buy materials and pay faculty decent wages (hence they can acquire good teachers).

Another cheap thing we can do to improve education is simple, stop running them like prisons. Morale has a huge impact on the effectiveness of people to perform tasks. If a student has high morale they will generally perform their task of learning better. Nothing kills morale quite as effectively as being treated like a potential criminal at all times. Currently many schools subject children to events such as random drug and weapons searches, all day surveillance, random accusations, and worst of all zero tolerance policies. But probably most destructive of all is the public education system being prejudice against students who think outside the approved lines. Take it from somebody who was heavily pro-gun back in high school, at some point you will be hauled into the principal’s office and be accused of plotting to shoot up the school shortly after a school shooting (in my case it was shortly after Columbine and it was a week of Hell).

Shit I’m on a roll so I’ll throw another improvement in. This one of course would involve money once again as most things do but alas it’s a good idea. We should start teaching children important life skills in school. I’m still surprised at how many of my fellow individuals don’t know how to balance a check book, read a legal contract (and boy is that an important thing to know), be proficient in the use of a computer, fix things around the house (luckily my school had shop classes but many no longer do), and think logically.

Yes there should be seminars (we probably don’t need classes for all of the listed things) on basic things like balancing check books and reading legal contracts. I know I read every line of any contract I sign and I don’t put pen to paper until I understand every clause. Most people don’t and willfully sign away the damnedest of things. I firmly believe there should be classes on basic home repair and maintenance as well as logical thinking. If people knew how to do basic home repairs they would save a fortune. If logical thinking was made important we wouldn’t have to entertain all these illogical arguments like gun control (I knew I could slip that in somewhere).

Simply extending the school day isn’t going to accomplish much. In fact I’m at a loss on how we can afford to extend the school day when most schools are government funded and the government doesn’t have any money.

Nation Firearms Act, Screwing Over Those Who Comply Since 1934

Walls of the City shows us even if you try to comply with the National Firearms Act you should be bloody careful because purchasing the wrong accessory will make you no longer compliant. See Jesus Amador Jr. had a H&K SP89 pistol. He also owned a vertical grip for it which makes it an any other weapon under the NFA. But Mr. Amador is a good law abiding citizen and jumped through all the hoops to properly register the gun with the ATF.

The problem is that even though it was properly registered as an any other weapon he also possessed a butt stock for the pistol. Well he decided to sell the pistol with the vertical grip and butt stock attachments. What he didn’t know was the person buying it was an undercover agent and all the hoops jumped through didn’t mean shit. See because he had a butt stock attachment the gun needed to be re-registered as a short barreled rifle instead of an any other weapon. Mr. Amador didn’t know this and figured if he registered his pistol as an NFA weapon he was good to go. This sums up the story appropriately:

Well folks my name is Jesus Amador, you out there might just know me as Digitalage03, i recently met up with a prospected buyer for my sp89 clone pistol, well turns out the guy was a undercover cop and the reason he wanted to meet up with me is because he saw that i was selling the pistol with a stock as one of the accessories, which by the way it was never on the gun and it is legal to own, you just cant install it without a tax stamp, well anyways once i met up with him not only did i get slammed to the ground and had about 7 armed cops (one of which) had a loaded 12ga to the back of my head while on the ground handcuffed they also illegally searched my car and even had the balls to drive off in my car from private property to a public place so they can tear thru it before the towtruck came and got ,

Thankfully the police apparently fucked up big time with the arrest which is probably the only thing that will save Mr. Amador from a long prison sentence for having the gall to own a butt stock attachment for his pistol. Anybody who says the National Firearms Act is a good law and doesn’t affect innocent people is a fucking moron.

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Anti-Gunner Statistics

Joe Huffman shows us once again how the anti-gun crowd lies. According to a web site ironically containing the word logic in the title over 500 children die each year due to gun related accidents. Bad news for the anti-gunners, the Center foe Disease Control tracks such information. And of course their statistic is right if you redefine children to be anybody 54 years of age or younger. Once again the anti-gunners show they don’t just stretch the truth they redefine it completely.

Further Research

CDC National Vital Statistics Report for 2006 [PDF]

If You Have a Cold You’re a Criminal

The War on Guns reminds us that there is a law against doing almost everything. Sally Harpold is a dirty criminal. Why? Because she dared to purchase a box of Zyrtec-D and a box of Mucinex-D in the same week. See both of these common medicines contain pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in meth. Under Indiana law you can only purchase 3.0 grams of pseudoephedrine in a week. Her combined medicine purchase netted her 3.6 grams. Hence she is a criminal.

Always remember the nanny state knows best and enacts these laws to protect you from yourself. After all even if you are purchasing medicines containing pseudoephedrine for your cold you probably aren’t aware that purchasing more than 3 grams will actually alter your thinking and make you want to produce meth.

Sure We’ll Lighten Up After You Stop Lying

Snowflakes in Hell brings us a rather amusing piece provided by the “un-bias” media. The media is telling the NRA (that would be us) to lighten up on the mayors. We all know Mayors Against Illegal Guns is an organization purposely named in a deceptive manner to increase their numbers. Over 50 mayors have been stricken from their roster already. The NRA has been pushing hard against them every since Bloomberg decided to push hard against the NRA.

Here’s my response to the media’s request. Sure we’ll lighten up the second you and Bloomberg’s posse stop lying about the purpose of the organization and who is in it.

Bad Advice is Bad Advice

I found a story involving bad advice on John C. Dvorak’s blog. Apparently Aspen, Colorado has a bear problem. The bears are moving in and feeding off of the trash of the local human population. Of course this means they are getting used to humans which is what the local officials don’t want. Here is their advice:

They are now actively telling residents to be, literally, mean to the bears. Yell at them, throw rocks and if they charge you, stand up to them. “You want to be as big, as large as possible, and you always want to fight back with a black bear,” said Hampton. Black bears tend to be timid and are generally not aggressive.

Yeah that’s right piss off a bear. Sure black bears will normally run but I certainly don’t want to be on the business end of those claws and teeth should they decide to call my bluff. If I’m going to stand my ground against a bear of any sort I will do it holding a gun in my hand. So if it’s OK to shoot the bear I’ll stand up to it, otherwise my route of action will involve going inside and placing a call to the local animal control center.

Advising people to throw rocks at a charging bear is idiotic and irresponsible. Chances are if it’s charging you it’s pissed off enough where getting pelted by rocks isn’t going to ward it off.

You Mess with Veterans They Mess with You

Here is a rather funny story from Days of our Trailers. Some drunk decided to be funny and steal a flag from his local VFW and burn it. Here is the thing if you want to fuck with somebody you may want to pick somebody besides veterans of foreign wars. See veterans that have been sent across the ocean to other countries to fulfill their duties often had to find creative ways to entertain themselves. These ideas often involve pranks on other people. So you are dealing with a population of people who probably entertained themselves by finding creative ways to get at other people.

Well the members of the VFW did get back at the flag thief. They found him and, I’m guessing, provided him the option of an ass beating or something less painful but more humiliating. The VFW members duct taped the flag thief to a flag pole at a kids soccer game. I say kudos to the members of the VFW to creativity and victory.

I’m Never Flying Again

The TSA is the ultimate in security theatre. Every time somebody attempts an attack they implement a new security measure in an attempt to thwart that specific attack. Well it looks like we’re all going to get cavity searches performed on our posterior ends. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog I found a story that you probably aren’t going to read every day.

A wanted militant (for involvement with al Qaeda no less) named Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri tried to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Mr. Mohammed is a Saudi prince in charge of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism efforts so it makes sense an al Qaeda militant would want him dead. It’s the method of assassination this is most interesting though. Mr. al-Asiri smuggled a bomb in that was stuffed up his ass. I’ll forgo all the pain in the ass type pun jokes as they are simple too easy. Anyways it didn’t go down as expected:

After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.

But the fact of the matter is if TSA hears about this we’re all getting anal probed before every flight. Once that happens I’m never flying again.

AES Encryption Explained with Stick Figures

As most of you guys have figured out by now I like security. Being I like security I find the AES encryption scheme to be very useful as it’s a scheme that, as of yet, doesn’t have a practical attack against it. This is rather funny considering how simple the implementation of AES is (the algorithm itself, implementing it in code correcting isn’t quite so easy do to unforeseen attack vectors being introduced by poor implementation).

So how simple is it? Simple enough where the entire algorithm can be explained with a stick figured comic strip. A hat tip goes to Bruce Schneier’s blog for this one.